Six-time Super Bowl winning head coach predicted to leave college football

A six-time Super Bowl has been predicted to walk away from a major college football program in 2026.

Bill Belichick watches the Miami Hurricanes play the Indiana Hoosiers during the first half of the College Football Playoff National Championship | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The 2025 college football season is nearly three weeks in the past. The season was filled with incredible storylines ranging from Indiana's improbable national championship run to Arkansas naming Bobby Petrino as its interim head coach 14 years after firing him with cause.

One of the most intriguing storylines leading up to the 2025 season was North Carolina's hiring of former NFL head coach Bill Belichick.

For 24 seasons, Belichick served as the head coach of the New England Patriots, winning six Super Bowls and constructing one of the great dynasties in NFL history. After a season away from football, Belichick decided to try his hand at the college level.

Belichick was North Carolina's successor to Mack Brown, another older coach who had spent some time away from coaching prior to taking the job. Brown finished his second stint with the Tar Heels at 44-33 overall, but North Carolina never won more than nine games in those seasons despite boasting a pair of potent quarterbacks in Sam Howell and Drake Maye.

The debut of Bill Belichick as a college football coach was so anticipated that it received a standalone window on Labor Day night. The Tar Heels scored a touchdown on their opening drive, but it all went downhill after that. TCU scored 41 consecutive points over the next three quarters, defeating North Carolina 48-14.

North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Bill Belichick with TCU Horned Frogs head coach Sonny Dykes | Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

North Carolina won its next two non-conference games at Charlotte (20-3) and against Richmond (41-6) before suffering a blowout loss to UCF (34-9). What followed was a 2-6 mark in ACC play, the only wins coming against two of the worst teams in the league. The Tar Heels finished 2025 at 4-8 overall, their worst mark since 2018.

Belichick's return in 2026 is not giving the college football media landscape an optimistic view of the Tar Heels heading into next season. In The Athletic's compilation of way-too-early predictions for 2026, Mitch Sherman predicted Belichick would walk away from North Carolina in the middle of the season.

The Tar Heels are staring at a rematch with TCU to open the season in Dublin, Ireland. North Carolina has another marquee non-conference game against Notre Dame, a team that is out to prove it belongs in the College Football Playoff after its exclusion this past season.

All of the Tar Heels' 2026 ACC road games are against teams with winning records in 2025, two of which are against ACC Championship participants in Duke and Virginia. Three of the Tar Heels' ACC home opponents played in the 2025 postseason, one of which is national championship runner-up Miami.

Belichick voluntarily stepping away from the Tar Heels would save the university a considerable amount of buyout money. North Carolina would pay him $1 million should he leave on his own terms, a relatively small figure in the era of multi-million dollar NIL deals for players.